The present invention relates to a biological information monitoring apparatus and a biological information monitoring method, and more particularly to a biological information monitoring apparatus and a biological information monitoring method in which an alarm threshold is adequately set.
In a clinical site, medical apparatuses for acquiring biological information related to sustention of the life and health of the patient are used in order to monitor the body condition of the patient. For example, the biological information includes the arterial oxygen saturation, the heart rate, the blood glucose level, the electroencephalogram, and the like, and is detected in the form of a biological signal by a sensor attached to the living body. In such medical apparatuses, there is an apparatus in which a threshold for a detected biological signal is set, and, when the biological signal reaches the threshold, it is determined that an abnormality occurs, and an alarm is activated. In response to the activating of the alarm, a medical person takes adequate measures, thereby enabling the life and health of the patient to be sustained.
As a technique related to the above, there is a medical apparatus in which current biological information is displayed and the threshold can be easily set on a touch panel (see JP-A-2001-070257).
In the technique disclosed in JP-A-2001-070257, the threshold can be set while monitoring the current biological information, but the threshold is allowed only to be set to a constant value. Even when the technique disclosed in JP-A-2001-070257 is applied to biological information which is changed with time in a normal state, therefore, there sometimes occurs a case where an abnormality cannot be detected. In the case where, with respect to biological information in which the measurement value is increased with time, the lower limit threshold is set based on an initial allowable range, after a biological signal once exceeds the threshold, the signal is always equal to or higher the lower limit threshold, and therefore the threshold is meaningless. By contrast, in the case where the lower limit threshold is set based on a final allowable range, the alarm is continued to activate until the signal reaches the threshold. In this case, even when the level of the biological signal is normally raised, it is determined to be abnormal. This causes a medical person to be unnecessarily worried, and surrounding persons to feel stress.